News of the World: Deserves banner headlines

News of the World (2020) • View trailer

4.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, occasional profanity, disturbing images and dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.20

Paul Greengrass always makes thoughtful, emotionally engaging films, whether crowd-pleasing thrillers — three entries in the Jason Bourne series — or ripped-from-the-headlines dramas, such as Bloody Sunday, United 93 and 22 July.

 

Having been stopped on the road by a gang of questionable intent, Jefferson Kidd
(Tom Hanks) and his young companion (Helena Zengel) are "escorted" into the
nearby community of Durand, their fate most definitely uncertain.

His newest, based on poet/author Paulette Jiles’ 2016 novel of the same title, is a bit of both … due to current events that weren’t as obvious when she wrote her book.

 

News of the World — opening today in operational movie theaters — is set in early 1870, in the untamed and dangerous border between South Texas and Indian territory. Although the Civil War is five years gone, the nation remains bitterly divided; that’s particularly true in this state. Texas has yet to be readmitted to the Union, having refused thus far to ratify the 13th amendment banning slavery.

 

Patrols of Union soldiers maintain an uneasy peace in towns, and on the roads linking them; their presence is just as likely to inflame tension, as prevent it. Half of the population passionately fought for a vision of the country that was defeated; it’s unclear whether America — as a unified entity — can heal itself. Information itself is suspect, depending on its source.

 

Sound familiar?

 

Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a veteran of three wars, leads a peripatetic life within this environment. He travels from town to town, armed with newspapers and broadsheets, and draws crowds as a non-fiction storyteller who shares the news of presidents and queens, glorious feuds, devastating catastrophes and gripping incidents involving individual people.

 

He’s no Charles Dickens, with a thunderous and well-acted performance; he hunches over and squints through a magnifying glass while reading the tiny print aloud. But his delivery is no less captivating, thanks to Hanks’ warmth and sincerity; Kidd has a dignified bearing that grants him authority. People hang on his words, and he fills the house at 10 cents a head, thereby earning a meager but reliable living.

 

He’s wary and careful, when on the road with his humble wagon; roving bands of Union soldiers aren’t necessarily any safer than thieves and cutthroats.

 

One day he chances upon a frightened 10-year-old girl (Helena Zengel). Papers recovered from her demolished wagon — her adult companion having been lynched, due to his skin color — reveal that she’s Johanna Leonberger, whose family was killed six years earlier by the Kiowa tribe, who then raised her as one of their own. She’s now being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will, after her Kiowa home was burned by the soldiers who “rescued” her. In effect, she has been kidnapped twice.

 

Kidd hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with her. He tries first to enlist official Union aid; when that fails, he attempts to temporarily leave the girl in the care of friends in the nearest town. But she’s wild, speaks only Kiowa, and is hostile to this “civilized” world she never has experienced. Kidd ultimately decides to deliver her himself, to where the law insists she belongs.

 

Sylvie's Love: Out of tune

Sylvie's Love (2020) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, which is needlessly harsh, for mild sexual content

By Derrick Bang

At first blush, Sylvie’s Love — an Amazon Prime original — is a charming romantic drama, very much in the cinematic style of its late 1950s/early 1960s setting.

 

Having discovered their shared interest in quality jazz, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) and
Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) can't help wondering if they have other things in common ...
such as a mutual attraction.

We rarely get a film so richly, thoroughly immersed in that period’s jazz scene. The incredibly busy soundtrack is laden with classics — “Waltz for Debby,” “Summertime,” “My Little Suede Shoes,” Sarah Vaughan’s “One Mint Julep” and many, many others — along with era-appropriate originals by score composer Fabrice Lecomte, drolly titled “B-Bop,” “B-Blue” and “B-Loved.”

 

Stars Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha are enchanting together, and we’re easily charmed as their characters meet and begin what becomes a challenging relationship. Nothing is particularly novel about writer/director Eugene Ashe’s narrative, but his film nonetheless delivers an affectionately retro, comfortably familiar vibe.

 

Until he hits us with a thoroughly ridiculous and wholly unwarranted left turn, as we near the story’s conclusion. Which, frankly, ruins everything.

 

I don’t often see a filmmaker sabotage his own work so catastrophically.

 

Following a fleeting (and rather pointless) flash-forward, the story opens during the hot Harlem summer of 1957. Sylvie (Thompson) fills her days helping at her father’s music store — Mr. Jay’s Records — although she actually spends more time glued to a TV set: not as a casual viewer, but as the careful observer of what goes into the production of a show, because she hopes one day to establish a career in television.

 

Robert (Asomugha) plays tenor sax in a bebop quartet led by the less talented — but much better known — Dickie Brewster (Tone Bell). Robert chafes at the artistic limitations, but, well, a gig is a gig.

 

Needing to supplement his income, Robert applies for a job at Mr. Jay’s Records, after seeing a “help wanted” sign in the window. He and Sylvie share a flirty meet-cute moment, but she’s unavailable; she’s waiting for her fiancé to return from war service.

 

“Unavailable” doesn’t meet “uninterested,” of course, and — as the days pass — nature takes its course. This romantic inevitability is given swooning intensity by pop tunes such as Doris Day’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” the Drifters’ “Fools Fall in Love” and Louis Armstrong’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

 

The Prom: Gotta sing! Gotta dance!

The Prom (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for thematic elements and suggestive/sexual candor

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.22.21

It’s easy to see why director Ryan Murphy was attracted to this Tony-nominated stage musical; it’s basically a double-length episode of his hit TV series, Glee.

 

On steroids. With an A-list cast.

 

Having decided to save a small Indiana town from itself, our four Broadway stars — from
left, Trent (Andrew Rannells), Barry (James Corden), Dee Dee (Meryl Streep) and
Angie (Nicole Kidman) — salute themselves in song.

The Prom — a Netflix original — boldly blends serious social commentary with frivolous Broadway razzmatazz, and gets away with it because the Bob Martin/Chad Beuelin script cheekily acknowledges as much.

 

“This is how actors intervene,” proclaim the lyrics in one of the many patter tunes, “through fiery songs and dance breaks!”

 

Indeed, Beguilin’s lyrics — he co-created the stage musical, with Martin’s book and Matthew Sklar’s music — are wickedly clever, with snarky messaging, insider jokes and tongue-twistingly inventive rhymes that even Tom Lehrer would admire.

 

Assign this material to scene-stealing talents such as Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells, and the result — while a bit bloated, at 130 minutes — is a lot of fun.

 

The story kicks off during the opening night production of Eleanor!: The Eleanor Roosevelt Story, a wildly expensive and thematically ill-advised musical featuring New York stage stars Dee Dee Allen (Streep) and Barry Glickman (Corden). The post-opening party turns into a disaster when reviews crucify the show, effectively flat-lining their careers.

 

While commiserating with career chorus girl Angie Dickinson (Kidman) — who has just quit her 20-year job in the musical Chicago, after once again losing the plum role of Roxie Hart, this time to Tina-Louise (very late of Gilligan’s Island, and still with us) — they decide that salvation lies is attaching their star status to some sort of noble cause, thereby reaping the benefit of flattering publicity.

 

Trouble is, Dee Dee and Barry are unapologetic narcissists — and even admit as much, in song — and therefore embrace this notion for all the wrong reasons.

Happiest Season: Romantic holiday angst

Happiest Season (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.20

Some people approach the holidays with far too much emphasis on expectation — everything must be just so, and God forbid any little detail goes awry — rather than simply basking in the comforting glow of seasonal spirit.

 

When Harper (Mackenzie Davis, left) and her family decide to hit the
local ice-skating rink, she doesn't think to ask if her lover, Abby
(Kristen Stewart) knows how to skate.

Add a supplementary “important” reason for gathering, and the pressure becomes enormous.

 

(And the stuff of countless Christmas movies.)

 

Abby Holland (Kristen Stewart) has suffered the Christmas blahs ever since losing her parents a few years back. Hoping to cure this, her lover Harper Caldwell (Mackenzie Davis) impulsively insists that Abby come along for a family celebration in her home town. Warming to this suggestion, Abby decides it’ll be the perfect time to meet Harper’s folks, and then propose to her on Christmas morning.

 

Ted Caldwell (Victor Garber), in turn, wants his entire family present during the few days leading up to Christmas, as a picture-perfect “showcase” to help fuel his run for town mayor.

 

Except …

 

Ted’s family is far from perfect. Harper’s younger sister Jane (Mary Holland) is an aggressively giddy nerd with no concept of social boundaries, who constantly babbles about the epic fantasy novel she has been writing for the past 10 years. Perfectionist mother Tipper (Mary Steenburgen), although polite to a fault, insists on recording everything for her new social media presence.

 

Snooty elder sister Sloane (Alison Brie) and her husband Eric (Burl Moseley) abandoned their law careers in order to craft custom-made gift baskets. (Correction: Sloane archly calls then “curated gift experiences inside of handmade reclaimed wood vessels.”)

 

On top of which … little problem … Harper confesses, during the drive from Pittsburgh to her family’s upstate Pennsylvania town, that she hasn’t yet come out to her parents.

 

Despite having told Abby that she did so, quite a few months back.

 

And, well, y’know, now probably isn’t the best time, given Dad’s mayoral run, and their community’s conservative values. So how ’bout you just pretend to be my straight roommate?

 

At which point, a gal with even an ounce of common sense and self-esteem would bolt from the car, and hitch a ride back to Pittsburgh. (But then we’d have no movie.)

Dear Santa: The year's best feel-good film

Dear Santa (2020) • View trailer

Five stars. Unrated, and suitable for all ages

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.11.20

Given how it was sabotaged by malevolent forces this past summer — over which its roughly 496,000 hard-working employees had no control — the U.S. Postal Service could use some nice publicity right about now.

 

Having decided upon the perfect gift for a needy child, the students in this grade school
classroom busily wrap it, in anticipation of delivery to an Operation Santa drop-off
center.

Documentarian Dana Nachman has delivered just the right package.

 

Dear Santa — available via Amazon Prime — isn’t merely a charming look at the USPS’ “Operation Santa Claus,” which dates back to 1912. It’s also a reminder — at a time when the opposite too frequently seems to be true — that the world is full of kind, thoughtful, selfless and generous people.

 

Children began writing letters to Santa right around the time cartoonist Thomas Nast drew an 1871 image of the Jolly Red Elf seated at a desk, reading his mail and sorting it into two labeled piles: “Letters from good children’s parents” and “Letters from naughty children’s parents.” (Nast, something of a curmudgeon, made the latter pile far taller.)

 

For the next few decades, such Santa mail was considered undeliverable and returned to their senders, or (much worse) consigned to the Dead Letter Office. This changed shortly after the turn of the century, when philanthropists and charities —embracing the notion of fulfilling Santa’s role for poor children who send him letters — pressured the USPS to adopt a kinder, gentler approach. Then-Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock responded by creating the program that now is more than a century old.

 

Before we go any further: Parents, rest assured that Nachman carefully maintains the all-important notion that the “USPS Elves” depicted here are merely Santa’s helpers, taking instruction from the super-secret enclave somewhere in the North Pole. Youngsters (and wise adults) who still believe in Santa Claus will not have that faith shaken by anything in this film.

 

Nachman opens with a too-cute-for-words montage of small children discussing all aspects of Santa: his history, what he looks like, how he delivers all those gifts in a single evening, and so forth. Nachman and editor Jennifer Steinman Sternin deftly cut in such a way that these kids finish each other’s thoughts and sentences; the effect is beyond adorable.

 

Some of the comments also have a classic “Kids Say the Darndest Things” vibe, such as this thought from a little girl named Cassidy: “My cousin met the real Santa, in real life, because he showed her his ID.”

 

This introductory sequence is merely the first of an increasingly powerful series of aw-shucks moments, during an 84-minute film that could touch even the heart of the crankiest Ebenezer Scrooge in your household.

Jingle Jangle — A Christmas Journey: Sparkling all the way

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.18.20

This is an impressive slice of holiday razzle-dazzle.

 

The tag line for writer/director David E. Talbert’s opulent fantasy promises that viewers will “discover a world of wishes and wonder,” and that’s an understatement. This often breathtaking blend of Alice in Wonderland, Babes in Toyland and Hugo also seems to be gunning for the seasonal crown long worn by The Wizard of Oz. 

 

Perky Journey (Madalen Mills), not one to be denied, insists that her grandfather
Jeronicus (Forest Whitaker) take another crack at perfecting his Buddy 3000 robot toy.

Because yes: Just as we’re getting accustomed to the production design and special-effects overload, John Debney’s orchestral underscore shifts into a Broadway-style prelude, and we realize, goodness, these folks are about to break into song.

 

Which they do. In addition to everything else, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey — a Netflix original — is an old-school musical, complete with a few extravagant dance numbers.

 

Actually, Talbert might hit us with too much of a good thing: a notion emphasized midway through this saga, when we’re introduced to an oh-so-cute little robot dubbed Buddy 3000 (and looking like he wandered in from WALL-E’s universe).

 

Events are related in storybook fashion, much the way Peter Falk narrated the action in The Princess Bride to grandson Fred Savage. The raconteur here is Grandmother Journey (Phylicia Rashad), who shares her childhood adventure with a pair of rapt young listeners.

 

First, a prologue, set in 1860 in the quaint Dickensian town of Cobbleton. Jeronicus Jangle (Justin Cornwell) is proprietor and designer of the delights found within Jangles and Things, the town’s famed toy shop. It’s chockablock with colorful, steampunk-inspired gadgets, gizmos, whachamacallits, thingamabobs and doomaflatchies, including a huge pendulum clock and a contraption called the Jangulator.

 

Production designer Gavin Bocquet went absolutely nuts with this eye-popping set, with its checkerboard floors, damask wallpaper and stairwell filigree; it’s impossible to take it all in.

 

Anyway…

 

Jeronicus uses the Jangulator to grant life to a doll-size, Spanish matador puppet dubbed Don Juan Diego (and played, via deliberately jerky motion-control, by Ricky Martin). Ah, but Don Juan is an evil little creature, and he persuades Jeronicus’ assistant, Gustafson (Miles Barrow), to set up a separate shingle and claim this miracle as his own.

 

Wild Mountain Thyme: A charming romantic fable

Wild Mountain Thyme (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and needlessly, for "suggestive content"

By Derrick Bang 

Lovers of British whimsy likely will embrace this leisurely romantic comedy — available via video-on-demand — which takes an Irish approach to the conventional formula.

 

Rosemary (Emily Blunt) has loved Anthony (Jamie Dornan) ever since they were 10 years
old. Now in their mid-30s, with so much time already behind them, she wonders if he'll
ever be brave enough to ask her hand in marriage.

Given the Irish setting and poetic spirit, writer/director John Patrick Shanley’s gentle little fable — which he adapted from his 2014 Broadway play, Outside Mullingar — naturally involves an element of loss, and is fueled by the beloved, melancholy Celtic folk song that gives his film its title.

 

The mood is established immediately by off-camera narrator Tony Reilly (Christopher Walken), who explains — as cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt’s camera swoops above the wild, amazingly green, stunningly gorgeous Irish countryside — “They say, if an Irishman dies while he’s telling a story, you can rest assured, he’ll be back.”

 

Seriously, how can you resist an opening like that?

 

Anthony Reilly (Jamie Dornan) and Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) have lived on neighboring farms their entire lives, and she has loved him unreservedly since they were 10 years old. Everybody in their closely knit farming community knows they’re meant for each other … except Anthony.

 

He’s an eccentric, tongue-tied introvert who — fearing that he’s “tetched” — believes himself unlovable. He steadfastly works the family farm, having taken over all chores and responsibilities from his aging father Tony, who nonetheless irascibly grumbles that his son “doesn’t have what it takes.”

 

To a significant degree, Tony is nettled by Anthony’s unwillingness to get on with it, and marry Rosemary, fercryinoutloud. She, in turn — her feisty, independent nature notwithstanding — patiently waits for Anthony to come to his senses. (“Romeo’s not able to climb the balcony,” Shanley muses, in the press notes, “and Juliet won’t come down.”)

 

Tony also grouses about the fact that their farm is blocked by two gates that enclose a little strip of road owned by the Muldoons: which is to say, it’s necessary to open and close those gates every time one enters or leaves the Reilly farm. 

 

The death of Rosemary’s father Chris — who spent his entire life “at war with the crows” — proves a catalyst of sorts. Rosemary’s mother Aoife (Dearbhla Molloy) is bereft, and Tony senses that his own time on Earth is drawing to a close. Something needs to be done, and so he makes a decision that dismays everybody: He announces his intention to sell the family farm to his American nephew, Adam (Jon Hamm).